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neon-age / Smart-Inspector

Fluent re-take on Unity Inspector UX. Packed with QoL improvements.
MIT License
923 stars 52 forks source link

How does the GPL work with an editor-only package such as this? #11

Open andybak opened 3 years ago

andybak commented 3 years ago

I'm working on an Apache-licensed project but I occasionally do closed-source stuff as well.

My understanding would be that the GPL would not be a restriction in either case. For the closed source project I'm only distributing a build so editor-only code is excluded.

For the Apache licenced project - I am not distributing as the repo would only have a reference to this project in the package manager.

So unless I'm making a derivative work - i.e. an editor extension that builds upon this - I wouldn't need to adopt the GPL merely to make use of this.

I guess my only concern would be customizations that leverage this project. But I could make them separate packages that are themselves GPL.

Does the above match your intentions with picking the GPL? I'm of course also keen that my usage matches your expectations as much as the letter of the licence.

neon-age commented 3 years ago

Seems like GPL is confusing to people. My only intent of using this license was for patent claims and other legal bits.

You're free - to use the plugin in any project, modify, and extend upon it's API. The rule of license adoption goes only for forks of my plugin, it doesn't affect packages that use it as a dependency.

Fluent UITK API, that I'll use for all future tools, will be published as a separate package under MIT license.

Also, I think the license might have to be changed (or removed entirely) once I publish the plugin on the AssetStore?

andybak commented 3 years ago

If you're mainly concerned about patents rather than the copyleft aspect of GPL then maybe take a look at the Apache licence?

neon-age commented 3 years ago

I took a deeper look into it, and the copyleft thing, that "spreads like cancer", is the opposite of what I wanted.

Global misconception of GPL speaks for itself. I'm now leaning towards switching to Apache license, it looks much cleaner.

TheBricktop commented 3 years ago

i think that LGPL3 is only "cancer" if you add it as a source to be compiled with not when its a compiled plugin or dll lib thats dynamically linked to Your project, but if it is staticaly linked then yo should use GPL3-link exclusive or sth like that. Edit: goshdarn i meant LGPLv3-link exclusive not gpl3 those licenses are confusing.